I have now tried extending the U-boat visual range (in NYGM sensors.dat) from 15000m to 20000m, when testing H.sie's single mission setup for the WOlfpack mod. The other change I made was to set wind to 5 m/s (visibility = light fog), a reasonable level often encountered.
It did not much improve the ability of the U-boat to detect the convoy, and the corvettes (crewrating=2) of the convoy quickly detected the U-boat as soon as it was daylight. [Edit: AI_sensors range is 11000m visual range for the corvettes, 6500m for their radar.]
The difficulty occurs when heading in to the convoy to make another sighting report. It sometimes happens that the escorts are carrying out their snake-like weaving pattern outwards at the same time, so the U-boat runs into them and cannot turn. Detection by the escorts always occurred at about 6-7000m, under these weather conditions.
A key factor that is probably influencing play is the state of training of the U-boat crew. When you play any single-mission, you start with an untrained, novice crew. By contrast, the escorts are already defined as 'competent' (CrewRating=2). This is likely to be less of a problem in campaign mode, since the U-boat crew-members are already likely to have reached some standard of skill by the time they encounter convoys.
H.sie is surely joking when he suggests that the correct way to shadow a convoy is at TC=1. This would require typically 12 hours from my real life each time I encounter a convoy. I have better things to do!
Completum:
Smoke-on-Horizon mod. This uses the standard SH3 convoy detection routines that are also used by the WolfPack mod, so there is no way of shadowing a convoy better than you can already.
Stiebler.
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